Slashdot Mirror
Campaign Financing Cyber Loophole
goombah99 writes "The Washington Post is criticizing a little-noticed bill wending it's way through congress that would allow unlimited and unreported campaign contributions by corporations and individuals as long as it was confined to internet advertising and publicity buys. While internet spending was only $14 million last year it is growing at a rate of 30 fold over four years poising it to overtake conventional media spending."
I don't think that we're going to find billions dumped into internet advertising, why? Because internet campaigning isn't going to be growing at 30 fold forever.
Campaign 1: $.5 million invested online
Campaign 2: $15 million invested online.
That's 30 fold (and 14.5 million).
Campaign 1: $100 million invested, Campaign 2: $120 million invested.
That's 1.2 fold (and 20 million).
Nobody is going to target the internet with large amounts of money when it's more feasible to target the general public using television/newspaper ads. Nobody is going to say, "Hey! Look! I can donate $100 million in internet advertising" *when the money can be better utilitised somewhere else*.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
1. I can block it more easily.
2. Fewer stupid people will passively receive ads than with TV, per ad dollar spent. It's better that they waste their money online.
3. Dollars spent on ad space will be far more distributed and to substantially less rich people, effectively redistributing income. At least, the money is much less likely to end up in the pocketbooks of Big Media. Yay, capitalism and (partial) socioeconomic justice at the same time!
Why, again, would this not be an improvement?
hmm... A vote that is only against a candidate (-1) would be like voting FOR (+1) all of the others. Might be an interesting system. Third party candidates might see alot better chances if the large number of people who don't want to vote for either of the main two, simply vote against one of them. Suddenly they've placed a vote for ALL of the other candidates (including 3rd parties). Republicans vote against the democrat. Democrats vote against the republican. The way things are going right now, that would leave them both with pretty close to zero positive votes, and the 20 people who voted 3rd party would easily overtake them. ;)
:D
Clearly there are holes all over this. It's 4:20am!
It's way cooler to move to an island in french polynesia and forget about the whole damned thing.
I agree that free speech entitles you to spend your own money to publish your views. However, this is not quite what political campaign financing does. (And the same can be said for the general lobby and PR machinery.)
If the CEO of a large oil company wants to spend his money or his company's money to make public that "Hi, I am the CEO of Exxon Mobil and I support candidate X for president because I think it would be good for the economy and my company if he gets elected.", then that would be perfectly acceptable. It would be fair to the voter, the industry, and the candidate. But it is not what happens in reality.
What happens is that funds are collected either to fund some political campaign directly, or to finance American Citizens In Support Of Future Economic Growth, or whatever those silly fronts are called. The public is not informed by public free speech, it is misled by secretively arranged and expensive propaganda. And this is not limited to election campaigns: Companies like Exxon support dozens of pressure groups with misleading names such as "Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow" in an attempt to bias government policy.
Last but not least, who do you want to pay your politicians? They are the people's employees: Voters choose them, entrust them with power, pay their wages, provide them with offices. I am pretty certain that, for example, Sun would take a dim view of any employee who would accept money equivalent to several times his wages from Microsoft. Yet voters are asked to tolerate that the people they chose to work for them, are completely dependent on large amounts of cash supplied by third parties. This is absurd.
So click the ads. You can cost the political parties you don't like money - thus having a voice in elections that ordinarily you would not have.
I don't get the whole bloging scene anyways. There are a LOT of people out there. Most of which I could not care less for. I mean just because you *can* write doesn't mean I want to read it [and for many the same probably applies to me as well].
I'm not saying blogging is bad or should be stopped. I just don't see the hype over it. I mean the fact that a blog business can make millions in revenue just boggles my mind.
People have to learn what "rhetoric" is. Put some perspective on things.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
no, a flat tax is flat, not progressive or regressive.
And besides, a rich person would still have much more money paid in taxes than a poor person.
Everywhere else you do buisiness, the more you buy the cheaper the rate. So what's so bad if it applies to government too?